Tales of knitting and Hillman Michigan's Long Lake

Tag Archives: Marissa Hernandez

This is Marissa Hernandez’s Glam Shells. The free pattern is available on Ravelry, in English, Spanish, French, German and Russian. It knits up quickly and easily even for the lace knitting impaired (like me). More than 700 Ravelers have knit it and posted their finished project on their project pages.

My Glam Shells used only about 350 yards of fingering weight yarn, on size 7 needles (US). Hernandez says the shawl should end up at 59 inches by 29 inches. I decided not to block very aggressively and mine is 50 inches by 24 inches. I used Natural Colors Merino Fingering by Swans Island. It’s a 3-ply light fingering weight, which I believe is a bit lighter weight than the Cephalapod Yarns Skinny Bugga that the pattern suggests.

I decided to take out a mortgage and buy a skein, one skein, of Swans Island. I choose the teal shade. You probably figure that my camera made it look blue. Actually, no.The ball band warns not to use wooden needles because dye will bleed from the yarn as you work and stain the needles. They weren’t kidding about that. So much dye bled while I worked that I had to keep wiping off my Addi nickel-plates to keep the stitches moving easily. My hands were stained blue. And it was not easily washed off the skin. In more than 50 years of knitting, I’ve never seen yarn bleed like this while I worked.

I can only imagine that the teal color was a mix of dyes that included indigo. Anyway, it included something blue. I soaked my Glam Shells for about 10 minutes in cool water and unscented Soak. The water turned a deep, deep blue. I cleared the basin and soaked it a second time and still the water was very blue.

The shawl looks great. It feels wonderfully soft. It’s very lightweight. But it isn’t teal. And all the soft plastic stitch markers I used are stained with dye.